Thessia

Sen relaxed back against the pillows, her mind spinning in shock. She saw the hard glint in Liara's eyes, the ferocity of the hand gripping the coverlet until the knuckles paled to azure. The Liara she had come to know had never shown any signs of bitterness; had not seemed capable of harboring hate. But they were centuries divorced from the time Liara spoke of, when she had been young and first discovering the horrors of heartbreak.

"Is that when…you first began...feeling bitterness towards Shepard?" Sen asked, her words soft and hesitant, pulling Liara from the quagmire of her memory.

"Yes." Liara answered, her voice dark, rich, heated like blood. "That is when it began. But I ignored it, at first. The pinpricks of anger were like throwing rocks into the ocean of my grief. They rippled, faltered, and died. But when the grief calmed, those rocks lay at the bottom of the ocean, a weight inside my chest, taking me down in a dark spiral whose depth seemed to have no ending."

Sen's lips quivered and tears pricked her eyes. Even if…even if Mira were not to survive her injuries, Sen did not believe she could blame the woman, or be angry with her. Mira had committed no crime; done nothing that she had not done a hundred times before. And Sen could understand what Shepard had done. She had chosen to save a life, and Sen felt that she would make the same decision. Because she and Shepard had taken an oath, for different purposes, but the same reason. To preserve life. Shepard had done so by destroying enemies. Sen did so by healing wounds and mending hearts.

Liara had taken no such oath, and as much as she believed she understood what it is to be a soldier, she could not know how dear some of them hold their vows. And Shepard…Shepard gave her life, not just for her species and race, but for all of them. But I do not believe that I could have this knowledge were I not three centuries old…in my full maidenhood, I would have perhaps been just as furious, just as wounded. Sen mused, almost afraid to push Liara further into the retelling.

"I could not sleep." Liara whispered. "Even when exhaustion would drag me down, it would wake me within an hour's time, crying, shaking, feeling a tearing sensation in my heart. I kept myself awake for as long as possible before I would fall into nightmares. Nightmares of holding Serena while she bled out, nightmares of being cast adrift in space and feeling myself freeze to death. But they were not always terrifying and dark dreams." Liara's voice cracked and Sen's heart burned for the grief of the young asari, all alone in the galaxy.

"Were they not?" Sen asked, shuddering as she remembered the nightmare that Liara had awakened her from.

"No." Liara looked away, out of the window to the full light of day, a harshness that seemed wrong for this quiet, intimate retelling. "The mind can conjure sweetness from ashes. It tires of torment and attempts to console. Little does the mind understand that the heart would rather remain broken rather than have what it longs for most dangled at the edge of a dream. I dreamed of our intimate nights. I dreamed of being locked inside her soul and in her body. I dreamed of her kisses, spicy like cinnamon and white pepper. And I woke to the nothing, the cold, the absence of her. I did not know it then, but I was dying. A little more, each day."

Sen's brow creased and she became confused, wondering if Liara spoke in metaphor or truth. "Does this…" she broached the question, "…does this have anything to do with your heart condition?"

"No." Liara shook her head. "That transpired later. This was a harsher injury dealt, and a greater consequence that I knew at the time."

"But it did not…it did not endanger your life." Sen said, not understanding.

"You are correct." Liara offered a sorrowful smile. "It endangered my soul. Grief, anger, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst…all of them ate away at me, physically, mentally, emotionally. In three weeks, I became a shell of myself, an empty vessel filled with rage, made all the stronger and more purposeful for the memories of love cut short too soon."

"What happened?" Sen asked, drawn once more into Liara's story-telling, though now she asked to hear, not for her own comfort, but because, as a healer, she could sense a wound left untended.

"Avarya returned." Liara breathed. "She came to arrest me for attacking her commando, who had not died, but who later underwent extensive surgery and augmentation in order to be able to walk again. The matriarch was furious, arrogant, and in that arrogance and confidence, she destroyed herself. You see…I had learned one thing, watching my mother die."

Sen nodded, afraid to speak in the presence of this Liara, who had, within a second, turned from someone awash in the memory of grief to someone cold, calculating…almost maleficent.

"Matriarchs are to be feared." Liara hissed, a malevolent laughter behind her voice. "They have lived centuries to a thousand years, honing their wisdom, learning the ways of other races, studying in tactics, building their biotics to an unsurpassable strength. But, my soldier had taught me two things. One, the element of surprise is unsurpassed. Two…given the element of surprise, bullets move faster than biotics."

Sen paled. She knew Liara had taken lives, many of them, in fact…but the gentle asari before her did not seem the sort to murder in cold blood. And it would have been murder. Sen knew the history of the Matriarch Avarya, renowned for her additions to asari law, vaunted for her strict adherence to rule and code, never known to venture from it. She would have come to arrest Liara for her crimes; not to kill her. But…that history also read that Avarya had died at home, in her sleep, of old age.

"You…you…"

Liara hung her head, the chaotic glow fading from her blue eyes. "I murdered her." the asari admitted, and Sen's heart gentled as it realized that Liara knew the scope of her crimes. "I orphaned her daughters as I had been orphaned. I took wisdom from the galaxy because I was bitter, angry, and so very, very afraid. Afraid that the world would never set itself aright."

"What did you do?" Sen queried, sitting up, letting her exhaustion fade as she sensed something about to be revealed that no other living person of any race had knowledge of.

"One does not simply kill a matriarch." Liara whispered. "I prepared to flee, to where I did not know. Until my omnitool chirped. I thought of ignoring the message, because I feared for my life…but something told me to open it."

"What did it say?" Sen asked, feeling stupid as she reiterated almost the exact same question as before, like a child.

Liara's eyes faded again, centuries back in her life. Her voice dropped, holding promise, holding the hope that must have ignited in her heart after reading the words she had not forgotten, even more than three hundred years later.

"Meet me in the Afterlife. For Serena."